February 2006

A reasonable hand-drawn facsimile.
Sunday, February 19, 2006 , 8:05 PM

Last night I wore my own kilt for the first time. I meant to get pictures, but it didn’t happen.
Unlike the hired kilts I’ve worn on two other occasions, something about this one felt right — the fit, the style. It’s just black (even though I’m entitled to wear the MacDonald Clan Ranald tartan), but that seemed like a good, modern, all-purpose kind of style. I managed to get boots and a belt that weren’t leather, and I wore a black T-shirt. I gotta say, it was pretty cool — as if someone else dressed me!

There are layers of significance to my wearing a kilt, most of which are obvious. The one that isn’t has to do with a pact I made with myself: A couple of years back, I told myself that when my first book sold, I’d use the advance to buy a kilt. Something in that typified the way I’ve been waiting on other people to make my future happen.

No more waiting.

I bought myself a kilt this week because I’m perfectly able to do that all on my own. Likewise, you’ll see some changes in my website, with one notable addition on the left-hand side, that reflect how this change in attitude has filtered through to my personal water-table.

I have the ability to produce my work from end to end, from the initial idea to a book you can hold in your hand. I don’t need anyone to discover me or deliver me. Instead of paying attention to businesses, I want to pay attention to readers and to stories, to the craft of what I do.

I read a great interview with Alice Walker this week, which went a long way to articulating the feelings I’ve been having, shifting from bitter sentiment to a powerful, happy feeling of realising I already have everything I could need. I’ve got a job I love, I’m self-sufficient. I can create just for the joy of it instead of making myself wrong and creatively hung-up for apparently not being marketable.

“When you are working on your work,” Walker said, “you really don’t have to be concerned about what other people are doing.” She talked about her anger when one critic said that Toni Morrison had to transcend writing about black women to be accepted. In her rebuttal to that critic, she said these golden words: “We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful.”

So here are some different, more interesting answers to questions people have been asking me for years:

Oh, you’re a writer. Are you published?
Old answer: No.
New answer: Yes, I’m a writer. And I publish my own work. I have my own press and I hand-bind my books.

I’d like to read one of your books. Where can I get them?
Old answer: Oh, you can’t.
New answer: You can buy them from my website. I’ll make them myself and send them to you.

There will be product pictures added as I make samples of each of the things I’m selling. I’ve been giving them away up until now, so I never have any around! Time to stop doing that, and to value my work.

I feel like I’ve stepped back into that creative community, like the ‘zinesters I met in Toronto when I put out my first book. In a commercial sense, that was the time when I was furthest away from ‘proper’ literary life. In my own life, it was the most switched on and relevant I felt as a creative worker. I’m supposed to be stuffing manuscripts into envelopes to send them off to capricious editors, but to hell with that. Self-publishing in Toronto gave me the chance to see a stranger reading my book on a streetcar, to do readings, and to meet other people who also weren’t waiting, but were doing their own creative thing for the real people around them, not for the marketplace or some imagined lottery of commercial recognition. I want to do that again. It’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s time to do that work, and there’s nothing I’d rather be doing.

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Days of the weak.
Saturday, February 11, 2006 , 3:45 PM

I was chatting with Cosgrove on MSN the other night, and he made a request that I keep blogging about little stuff, even though, yes, I’ve got super-secret project I’m working on (which anyone who’s been reading might guess in a second).

So.

I started at the gym near my house yesterday. It’s a former biscuit factory (oh, the irony!), and nothing fancy to look at, but it’s a good, serviceable facility inside. Goderre bought me a month’s membership when he was here as a thank-you for letting him stay. I’d gone in for an orientation the other day, and arranged to meet with someone to create a program for me yesterday.

I’ve let go lately, but I still think of myself as fairly fit. I walk a lot and am fairly careful with what I eat (except for snack food, my downfall). And I did pretty well as this cute young lass went through devising exercises for me to do and writing them out on a chart. But about 4/5 of the way through, I got that oxygen-drunk feeling and went all cold and lightheaded. “Are you alright?” she asked me. “You look a bit pale.” I sat down and took a break, then we did some more, I sat down for a bit, then we did some more, and I got more lightheaded.

I assured her that I wasn’t unwell, and that if I were I would tell her. But I wasn’t used to getting all that oxygen. (I guessed.) It was kinda embarrassing, really, being a grown man, trying not to faint in front of this slight blonde girl.

We cut the session short, and she talked me through the other exercises that are in my routine. They’re ones I’ve done before, back when I used to go the gym downstairs in The Strategic Coach’s mailroom every day. But yesterday I was forced to sit on a mat, catch my breath, and go home.

So it was humbling, but I’m definitely going back. I’m stiff as hell today, but I feel great. I’m all ears if anyone wants to e-mail me suggestions about how to keep that lightheadedness at bay while working out.

Actually, I know part of the reason: The trainer asked me “What did you have for breakfast this morning?” I realised that I’d kinda forgotten to eat for two days, except for part of a bag of corn chips.

Mental note.

When Goderre was here, we went to the Museum of Scotland because I love it and subject everyone to it.

One display features the mask used by a country preacher during the Jacobite rebellion as he travelled about, ministering while trying to avoid getting caught.

That’s sensible enough, except that this is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen:

Preacher? Holy! That reminds me of nothing so much as the spooky David Cronenberg character in the movieNightbreed.

When Goderre and I went through Glasgow Prestwick airport, I saw that they’d rebranded the place. The slogan? “Pure dead brilliant!” I thought that was, well, pure dead brilliant: instead of trying to compete with the posh executive airports, they went straight for the local slang.

Well, except it was pointed out to me by my Actual Scottish Friend JP that “pure dead brilliant” is from Glasgow, not the Prestwick area. Except they call the airport Glasgow Prestwick, so I’ll cut them some slack there, ’cause they’re trying to pretend that the place is remotely related to Glasgow (even though it’s way over on the Ayrshire coast).

The branding continued through to some funny illustrations, like a ‘graffiti’ tam on the washroom-symbol man, a scarf on the woman, and a shawl over the lap of the handicapped figure.

And over the bar?

The last day Goderre and I were in London, we ended up in Soho, where I found The Best Bookshop Ever — The Dover Bookshop.

Now, as a somewhat illustrator and graphic designer, I normally loathe clip-art, but this shop was full of the best books of royalty-free (or “permission-free” in their argot) images, each with a CD full of high-quality scans of the artwork in the book. I bought one of these, which has already proven immensely useful.

I also got two other books on papercraft displays and packaging that I’m really excited about but would bore the bejeezus out of any normal person.

Coming back home on the train from Glasgow Prestwick, I looked out the window and smiled.

I just love Scotland.

I’ve been working on a big project lately related to our upcoming book, The Laws of Lifetime Growth.

While working away on this in the Edinburgh Central Library yesterday, I listened to some recordings I’d downloaded in the morning called “One-Minute Vacations“. These are really fun, little auditory landscapes like a street scene, bells, water buffalo splonching through mud and breathing, the sound of a train, and so on.

Just something different.

Yesterday I walked to the post office to send something off and I saw something I’d never thought about before: street sign calligraphy. The road crew of two were chalking out guidelines and letterspacing marks, then filling them in with that thick industrial yellow paint they use:

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